AUTHOR’S NOTE: Those who (like me) are “older than dirt” will remember Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In with Lily Tomlin as “Ernestine” the telephone switchboard operator and her iconic line “One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy” as she patched a call through and waited for the receiving party to pick-up.

In this spread I’ve used the “patch-cord” motif to link a series of six cards, showing situational development from inception (Line A) to completion (Line E). The cards are shuffled and dealt into the pattern shown in the first image and a single six-sided die is rolled multiple times to create the sequence of cards for the reading.

The die is first rolled to identify the starting point at one of the six positions. It is rolled again to select the next position, and Line A connects the two. If the number rolled is the same as the first roll, try again until you get a different one. Keep going in this fashion, always rolling for a unique – i.e. not previously rolled – number at each new position and connecting that card to the previous one, until Line E is reached. (To reiterate, any number that is repeated should be disregarded such that there is only one instance of each card, so just keep rolling.)

Here is an example reading derived from the above array.

The narrative in the spread begins with an impetuous young woman (Card 3) and an older man who is caught flatfooted by her enthusiasm and set back on his heels (Card 4 reversed).

Frustration ensues (Card 2) because the two clearly aren’t on the same page (as can be seen from their opposite elemental dispositions – Fire and Water – and a visual comparison of the figures), and someone is going to be “made the fool” (Card 5). In this regard, the chorus from the classic rock song “Fire and Water” by Free (led by singer Paul Rodgers) is instructive: “Fire and water gonna make you their daughter/You got what it takes to make a poor man’s heart break.”

Disaster is narrowly averted but it’s a close call (Card 1 reversed), and in the end there are lingering moral consequences (Card 6 reversed). On a side note, during my long professional career two of my male coworkers were accused of having molested their young daughters; one was convicted but not imprisoned and the other wasn’t formally charged but was condemned to suffer the girl’s suicide when she was older. There seem to be echoes of that here since I see punishment but not a lot of justice.

On that last point, the scene in the RWS version of the 7 of Wands shows an embattled warrior holding the “moral high ground” against overwhelming odds, but reversal could knock him off his feet as is the case here. It looks like the nonplussed Knight of Cups will barely escape with his dignity intact. I’m reminded of the “wedding guest” in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “A sadder and a wiser man he rose the morrow morn.” Another point to ponder is “There’s no fool like an old fool.”